Signals transported from a source to a destination can be switched. Current day practice in professional video environments typically involves use of cross point switches interconnecting devices with a serial digital interface (SDI).
SDI signals can be encapsulated in or mapped to packetized traffic such as Ethernet packets for transport on an internet protocol (IP) line segment where each video frame translates to a multitude of, e.g. a few thousand, packets.1 In this IP environment, signals can be switched using widely deployed IP switching technologies available from a multitude of vendors including Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Alcatel-Lucent. 1 See e.g., SMPTE 2022-6:2012, Transport of High Bit Rate Media Signals over IP Networks (HBRMT).
However, Ethernet switches do not provide for clean switching of video signals for reasons including their ignorance of video frame boundary locations in the packetized traffic. And, even if Ethernet switches included this capability, yet other problems arise in the context of switching non-aligned video streams.